The Yvelines Departmental Council has more than 3,800 employees. Faced with the growing volume of data to manage and the ongoing need of its line departments for reliable metrics, the Yvelines Departmental Council decided to implement a business intelligence tool.
A look back at the solution’s deployment, featuring an interview with Phuong-Anh Barrier. She is the BI project manager in the Information Systems Department of the Yvelines Departmental Council.
Under what circumstances did you decide to adopt a business intelligence solution?
“In 2017, the Information Systems Department sought to provide a business intelligence solution to the business units. The idea was to ensure the urbanization of the information system. But it was also necessary to meet the demand from the General Directorate of Services for reliable, cross-functional aggregated metrics. I was therefore hired to streamline and optimize the Business Intelligence tools already in place within the Department. My conclusion was simple: the existing solutions were not suited to the business units’ needs.”
Business units have an ever-increasing need for metrics to manage their operations. To obtain these metrics, it is necessary to cross-reference data from different departments. This data was stored on separate servers and analyzed independently by each business unit. For example, one business unit uses Excel to aggregate and analyze the data, while another has created its own Access database. As a result, generating these metrics required a significant amount of man-hours, which also increased the risk of errors due to manual re-entry.
“In addition, users wanted more dynamic dashboards and a more user-friendly tool. So we decided to implement a new business intelligence solution.”
What was your process for selecting this new tool?
“We benchmarked four solutions suggested by the various business units. We then put together a comparison chart, which we presented to the relevant departments. It was the DigDash Enterprise solution’s intuitiveness and user-friendliness that won us over. The fact that it is a French software provider was also an important factor for us.”
“It’s an ‘all-inclusive’ solution. There’s no need to add a lot of modules—the core features are very comprehensive. Plus, the support teams are very responsive; we’re always able to find solutions quickly.”
How is the solution being rolled out?
“To begin with, users in the Land and Real Estate Engineering Department launched a pilot project using dashboards. The goal was to analyze the monitoring of the Department’s real estate portfolio. This gives them a comprehensive view of the real estate portfolio (which also includes middle schools).”
They can track maintenance work at the facilities, their energy consumption, the rental portfolio, and more. In total, several thousand data points from various databases are aggregated.
Thanks to data visualization, business analysts can quickly spot inconsistent data. This allows them to raise awareness among the operational staff responsible for collecting it, thereby improving the reliability of data entry processes. But that’s not all! They can also identify issues and make appropriate decisions. For example, they can optimize a building’s electrical system if they notice unusual energy consumption. In short, our teams are able to respond more quickly.
We currently have 30 active users. We plan to eventually expand the solution to the Finance, Human Resources, and Social Services departments. The goal is to generate metrics and dashboards for the General Directorate of Services. “This is to ensure the reliability of strategic management of the Yvelines Departmental Council’s operations.”